Creating A Canvas

Follow this guide, or check out our LAB course!

Step 1: Navigating to the Canvas page

Click on the “Canvas” link on the Dashboard’s side navigation located underneath the “Campaigns” link:

Step 2: Create a New Canvas

Click the “Create New Canvas” button:

Step 3: Name Your Canvas

Click on the name of your Canvas to edit it:

Step 4: Set Your Starting Condition

Click on the “Starting Condition” link to control how users will be enrolled in a particular Canvas.

There are two ways in which users can enter your Canvas. With scheduled delivery, users will enter on a time schedule, similarly to how you would schedule a Campaign. You can enroll users in a Canvas as soon as it is launched, or enter them into your journey at some point in the future, or on a recurring basis.

Additionally, you can choose to enter users into a Canvas when they perform certain triggers using Action-Based Delivery. Users will enter your Canvas and begin receiving messages when they take particular actions, such as opening your app, making a purchase, or triggering a custom event.

You can control other aspects of your Canvas’ behavior from the Entry Audience window, including rules for re-eligibility and frequency capping settings.

Should the window of re-eligibility be less than the maximum duration of the Canvas, a user will be allowed to re-enter and receive more than one step’s messages. In the edge case where a user’s re-entry reaches the same step as its previous entry, Braze will deduplicate that step’s messages. In the event where a user re-enters the Canvas, reaches the same step as their previous entry, and is eligible for an in-app message for each entry, the user will get the message twice (depending on in-app message priority) as long as they re-open a session 2 times.

Step 5: Select Your Send Settings

Click “Send Settings” to turn on rate-limiting and/or Frequency Capping.

By turning on rate-limiting or Frequency Capping below you can ease the marketing pressure placed on your users and ensure you aren’t over messaging them. To learn more about the benefits of rate-limiting and Frequency Capping click here.

Then, specify Quiet Hours (the time during which your messages will not send) for Canvas. Check “Enable Quiet Hours” in your Send Settings. Then, select your Quiet Hours in your user’s local time and what action will follow if the message triggers inside of those Quiet Hours.

Step 6: Set Your Target Audience

Click on the “Target Audience” link to control the eligible audience for your Canvas:

You can set the target audience for your Canvas from this screen. Only the users who match these criteria can enter the journey. For example, you might want to limit a particular journey to users who first used your app less than 3 weeks ago. You can also control settings such as whether messages should be sent to users who are subscribed or opted-in to your notifications.

Step 7: Choose a Conversion Event

Click on the “Conversion Event” link to choose a conversion event goal for your Canvas:

We will use the Conversion Event that you set from this screen to measure the efficiency of your Canvas. If your Canvas has multiple variants or a Control Group, Braze will use this Conversion Event to determine the best variation for achieving this Conversion goal. Using the same logic, you can create multiple Conversion Events:

Step 8: Add a Variant

Click the “Add Variant” button and select the option to add a new variant to your Canvas. variants represent a journey that your users will take:

You can add additional variants by pressing the + button. When you add new variants, you’ll be able to adjust how your users will be distributed between them so that you can cross-compare and analyze the efficacy of different engagement strategies:

Step 9: Editing a Step

Click anywhere on a Step, and Braze will open the Step editing interface. Steps can be configured to send messages after either a fixed delay, or when a user performs a particular action. For example, you can use Canvas to configure a Day 1, Day 3, Day 7 onboarding Campaign with time delays between messages:

Or you can set a group of messages to be sent after your users take a particular action, with a configurable window, delay, and exception events:

You can also apply Filters to each Step of a Canvas. Use this to add additional control flow logic, such as dropping users out of a journey when they’re not likely to need additional engagement encouragement:

Edit the Messages in a Step to control messages that a particular Step will send. Canvas can send Email, Mobile & Web Push messages, and Webhooks to integrate with other systems.

Press the “Done” button once you’ve finished configuring your Step.

Step 10: Add More Steps

Add more Steps by pressing the blue plus icon:

Step 11: Multivariate Testing Using Canvas

You can add a Control Group to your Canvas by clicking on the Plus icon to add a new variant. Braze will track the Conversions for users who are placed into the Control Group, although they will not receive any messages. In order to preserve an accurate test, we will track the number of Conversions for your variants and the Control Group for exactly the same amount of time, as shown on the Conversion Event selection screen. Adjust the distribution between your messages by double clicking the variant Name headers.

Intelligent Selection for Canvas

Intelligent Selection capabilities are now available within Multivariate Canvases. Similar to the Intelligent Selection feature for multivariate Campaigns, Intelligent Selection for Canvas analyzes the performance of each Canvas variant and adjusts the percentage of users being funneled through each based off their performance metrics in such a way that the total expected number of conversions is maximized. Keep in mind that multivariate Canvases allow you to test more than copy, but timing and channels as well. Through Intelligent Selection you can test Canvases more efficiently and have confidence that your users will be sent on the best possible Canvas journey.

Intelligent Selection for Canvas optimizes your Canvas’s results by making gradual real-time adjustments to the distribution of users sorted into each variant. When the statistical algorithm determines a decisive winner among your variants it will rule out the underperforming variants and slot all future eligible recipients of the Canvas into the winning variants. For this reason, Intelligent Selection works best on Canvases that have new users entering frequently.

Step 12: Saving & Launching Your Canvas

Once you’re done, press the “Launch Canvas” button at the bottom right to save and launch your Canvas. You can also save your Canvas as a Draft if you need to come back to it.

Once you’ve launched your Canvas, you’ll be able to view analytics for your journey as they come in: